Towards the end of my stay, I came home to find a tent set up in the empty block next door. “It’s Takeshi’s punishment,” I was told, though not what the crime was. “He has to sleep outside for three nights.”
‘Cool,’ I thought. ‘Not much worry about curfews if you’re sleeping in a tent.’ It was set up quite comfortably with a futon and a cassette deck, but apparently Takeshi didn’t like it. When I came home the following day, the tent was gone.
“He was too scared to stay outside,” Okaasan told me, laughing, “so he came inside at one o’clock this morning.” Which meant that they’d left the door unlocked for him as well.